Oya Rose Aktaş

Oya Rose Aktaş is a recipient of the Academic Year 2019-2020 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. The award provides undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students with financial support to develop fluency in less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) and expertise in the regions in which these languages are spoken. Every year the Center for Global Studies awards between 12-15 fellowships to UW students. Click here to learn more.

Oya Rose Aktaş is a PhD student in the History Department studying minoritized groups in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. Her current research focuses on how state violence targeted at Christians affected the position of Jews in Istanbul. Studying Persian has allowed Oya to understand dynamics that extended across the Ottoman and Persian Empires, which both housed diverse groups of (among others) Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, and Arabic-speaking folks. Prior to graduate school, Oya worked on U.S. foreign relations and economic policy at think tanks in Washington, D.C.